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Tor Developer Jacob Appelbaum Allegedly Intimidated Victims Into Silence and Anonymity (dailydot.com)
blottsie quotes a report from The Daily Dot: In the wake of programmer Jacob Appelbaum's abrupt departure from the Tor Project, rumors and accusations about both sexual misconduct and bullying have surfaced that extend back years. Now, four witnesses -- including a current senior Tor employee -- are stepping forward into the public eye, adding valuable insight into how Appelbaum allegedly intimidated those around him to keep accusations of sexual misconduct secret and pressure those who are speaking out to remain anonymous. [Late last week, a website was launched in which alleged victims of Appelbaum's sexual misconduct joined together to post their stories in an effort to publicize them without a much-feared wave of personalized and professional backlash. The stories are graphic and describe the ways Appelbaum allegedly assaulted people in public and in private. Three current Tor employees -- two of which agreed to be named on the record -- have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net. Although they continue to maintain anonymity for the authors of the stories, these Tor employees are now publicly vouching for the site's authenticity, which Appelbaum has called into question. Appelbaum broke his silence on Monday, deriding the accounts of his former colleagues as "vague rumors." It was an "attack," he said, on his reputation, led by character-assassins spreading "vicious and spurious" allegations against him.] In May, one of Tor's core software developers dodged the FBI and left the U.S. for Germany to avoid testifying in a criminal hacking investigation.
Whatever, somehow every software nerd to rock the security boat is secretly a rapist? Is that really the most likely explanation for this? Coincidentally one of the most impossible crimes to convict... and totally impossible to exonerate in the public eye.
Sure is a coincidence!
I have no idea about the man's guilt or innocence, but it seems to me that if you want to make a guilty man look innocent, an obvious smear campaign like that website is one way to do it.
It's not so much to protect women.
It's more to be able to start up witch trials against men who are doing something important.
This is actually the main reason for all law. Law does not exist to create justice in any logical sense. It exists solely as a device to turn the masses against anyone who challenges the status quo.
That's how sociopaths like Appelbaum or Assange can get away with stuff that would make a rockstar lose his hardcore fanbase. Anyone who complains about those guys is crucified by legions of idiots. This is the same kind of uncompromising, full-on hate behavior of the Westboro baptist church or the abortion clinic bombers. Different dogma and cult leaders, same mindless worshipping and mob mentality.
Nobody accused Snowden of being a rapist or an overall asshole. You know why? Because he didn't harass, bully or walk over people for years. Yet he's a much bigger "target" than a developer on a government-funded security project or a pathetic has been whistleblower.
lucm, indeed.
Ok, so here's my Jacob story. I'm going to post as AC despite having an account here with excellent karma. I stand by what I say but I don't wish to have any conversations with those who might want to know more, as will become obvious below. So mod it as you see fit.
Everything I'm telling you would have to already be known to the relevant authorities. (Which is the point.)
I liked Jacob Appelbaum, he had done some really good things. I admired him.
I had a conversation with Jacob a few years ago. This is a direct one-on-one in-person conversation. We were talking about teaching hardware hacking and at some point the subject came up of his hacker outreach work. He got to talking about a trip he had taken to Iraq to teach hardware hacking and stuff. This was while there was still a big U.S. presence there and a lot of fighting. That sounded cool at first. Maybe generous and kind of daring. But as he went on it turned out he was teaching teenagers how to hack remote controls, like garage door openers and stuff. Not bombs or anything, but just how to hack remotes, ya know, and rig them to things.
I was stunned. I mean, these are basically young men of fighting age, in a war zone. What do you think they might do with this new skill?
I didn't know what to say. I asked, "Don't you think that's a bit irresponsible, under the circumstances?"
He said something that I can't remember verbatim about knowledge being generally good. I was annoyed, I pressed him on it. Like, what if they blow up some poor kid from Oakland? Eventually he got annoyed and went on a long rant about how it's their country and we have no right to be there and so whatever happens happens, and related things, etc.
I didn't even respond. At best this is completely idiotic. At worst, he just admitted a very serious crime.
Ok, so I am against the Iraq war. I'll say so and put a sticker on my car and vote accordingly on election day. But WHAT. THE. FUCK. To actually go there and share your abilities in a way that contributes to their own sectarian violence AND gets people from your own country killed is in an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FUCKING UNIVERSE. I can't express the feeling I get thinking about this. It's like it's just too offensive to even qualify as STUPID. It comes to STUPID's door and is turned away on grounds of extreme repulsiveness. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This is so beyond the pale that my mind is unable to properly categorize it. Holy fucking shit.
I was and still am completely amazed and the irresponsibility and sheer narcissism of this kind of thinking. I have secretly considered him to be a dangerous monster ever since. The rest of the community now agrees. There is no happiness in this, but there is relief.
Now people talk about how he gets harassed by the authorities. It might be because he has done important and valuable work for privacy, which is true, and they don't like that and so they're messing with him. I believe this is probably true. It could ALSO be because he POKES THEM IN THE FUCKING EYE until they come after him, because he is a narcissist and if they are hounding him it will confirm his own sense of importance. That must feel good to a narcissist, being important like that.
Some people do something good, and because it is good, they are considered heroes. And some people really really want to be heroes. So they look for things that are undeniably good to do so they can become heroes. There is a pretty big difference between these two kinds of people. The very noble fight for rights and freedom attracts both. The second type attaches themselves to noble causes and when their true motivations are known, those causes are diminished.
The Mannings and the Snowdens are shadowed by the Assanges and Appelbaums. They are diminished by them. And yet, good work of the former could not have been done without the undeniably good work of the latter, done for both the right and wrong reasons.
I'm sorry, but do you live in a world where whenever any high profile geek gets accused of rape, his legions of fans line up to condemn him? Because in the world I've been living in, they line up to accuse it of being a giant conspiracy and his accusers of being lying sluts paid by the NSA.
I know there are some truths we don't want to acknowledge, but the reality is that polls of women show that about 1 in 6 report having been sexually assaulted during their lives, and there's an expected lifetime incidence of about 1 in 4. These are anonymous polls, they have nothing to gain by lying in them. Who the heck do you think it is that's assaulting all these women? Do you think it's just something like five guys, lurking in the shadows? The fact is that there are a lot of people in the general population committing rape. Something confirmed by anonymous surveys of men. A rather clever approach used to poll the other side of the equation (Lesak & Miller 2002, McWhorter 2009, etc) is, rather than to use the word rape in the surveys, simply survey about their various sexual experiences, and include some experiences in the list that are rape, without using the word rape to describe them. Depending on the group and the study, usually in the ballpark of 10% of young men confess to having committed rape at least once, and about a third of them to having done it multiple times. Which are numbers that correlate well with the victim reporting incidence.
Rape is not rare. Rapists are not rare. But convictions are. And victims know this latter fact, and few want to go through hell for something that is almost certain to be futile.
Maybe, but I can barely make out what you're saying because your horse is too high.